Archive for August 13th 2018

DES MOINES, Iowa — Two democratic presidential candidates visited Iowa to meet with constituents during the Iowa State Fair and other events.

Even though they are both in the same party, they don’t agree on the same solutions to the issues Americans face.

One of those issues is poverty.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang said his main focus is what he calls universal basic income. What that means is, each American between the ages of 18 and 64 would receive $1,000 per month from the government, no strings attached.

“If you look at our history, that proposal passed the House of Representatives in 1971 under Richard Nixon, a republican president. And 1,000 economists signed a letter saying this would be great for the economy. Everyone from Martin Luther King to Milton Friedman was for it. And one state has had this in effect for the last 35 years and that state is Alaska, which is a deep red conservative state. Everyone gets between one and two thousand dollars from oil money and there’s no reason we can’t do it,” Yang said.

Yang said this money would come from a new tax on companies who heavily benefit from automation.

Congressman John Delaney, (D) Maryland, said he disagrees with a universal based income, but he has a different solution to improve the economy.

“I don’t think we need to go to what he’s talking about, which is basically paying everyone in the country. I think what we need to do is make an economy that works for all Americans. Make sure they have the skills they need to get a good paying job that has a rising standard of living and make sure we do the kind of things to make our economy as competitive as possible,” Delaney said.

In addition to addressing poverty, both Delaney and Yang want to improve health care in the United States.

“Health care is a big thing for me. I think we should have universal health care in this country and I think there’s ways of both political parties actually coming together and making that happen. But we really have to be striving for universal health care,” Delaney said.

Yang didn’t say he wanted universal health care, but made suggestions on what he wants to do. “We have to get health care off the backs of businesses and families, where right now we spend twice as much on health care as other countries and we get worse results. And so we need to help make a system that isn’t awarded based on activity, which it is now, but on results and healthfulness,” Yang said.